and on goes the train
by RedCloakedMaiden
Summary: But Roxanne wears a gold dress, shines bright and for one night he holds the sun and isn't burned until the sun rises again and Roxanne looks over to him and says, "Thanks 'Sander, you're the best friend I could ever have". Drabble story.
1. lion

_([Who has never taken his eyes off her, says softly and slowly:] "Hedda—Gabler!")_

.

She is all boldness and hot sunlight, a lion's voice (roaring over the crowd or purring in his ear) and a mane of dark hair. He remembers visiting Africa and seeing real lions on a burning summer day and his mother telling him that it was the dark-maned lions that the pride wanted.

He first sees her like that on the train station and not again until her hair, sticks out from underneath the Sorting Hat as it bellows "GRYFFINDOR!"

Lysander glances to his twin, sitting apart from him at the Ravenclaw table; he sits quietly, his glasses askew from the quill he sticks behind his ear. They are light-haired, pale skinned creatures who had spent years traveling the globe to find the exotic but he is quite sure there is nothing that can compare to **her**.

* * *

**I decided to re-write **_and on goes the train_ **as a series of drabbles, I think it will work better this way. I'll be posting them all in rather quick succession too, so bear with me!**

**All quotes are from Hendrik Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_**, **the why is to come later. **

**Read and review!**


	2. courage

_("Ah, yes—courage! If one only had that!...Then life would perhaps be livable, after all")_

_._

It isn't easy getting to know **her**.

First of all, he is in Hufflepuff.

Lysander tries to sit next to **her** in their classes and when **she** drops **her** quill, he grabs it off the floor and hands it to **her**.

But he is no Gryffindor: he never says a word to **her** otherwise.

**She** doesn't have that problem. **She** is brighter than the sun; **she** is pretty:

He has seen pictures of **her** mother before and she is beautiful, but **this girl **is a gorgeous-sharp mix of **her** mother and aunt. **She** is tall even in their first year and **her eyes **are so dark, high-cut cheekbones, with that wavy hair...

**She** is popular too.

Outside classes, in the corridors and between the bookshelves of the library, he never sees **her** alone. Always, always surrounded by a pride of friends, but he never remembers any of them, **her **Gryffindor fire burns so brightly—


	3. summer

_("People say such things. But they don't do them.")_

_._

And then the sun was shines again every summer day and he is so mesmerized, watching **her** step off the train, he trips over Lorcan's trunk as they get off the Hogwarts Express.

"It will be all right," Lorcan says quietly, helps him back up. "You've got six years still."

Lorcan, with those green-tinted glasses, sees everything and says nothing. Like one of those poems he writes, he describes a vague impression, leaving out the muddy emotions.

Lysander can still only see **her**; she shines brightly even compared to the glowing Weasley family surrounding **her** now, and he still hadn't said it—

"_Hello Roxanne Weasley, my name is Lysander Scamander."_


	4. exist

_("One should never rush into adventures."..."Do you do that?")_

_._

Lorcan is wrong.

There is a crumple-horned snorkack sighting in South America and it's October before Lysander successfully reminds his parents about school. But the snorkack hadn't been caught yet so his school trunk isn't sent back to Scotland but to Iracema Universidade de Feitiçaria.

It isn't a problem since Lorcan can get along fine without ever saying a word and Lysander is fluent.

But Lysander isn't speaking to **her**.

Lorcan even learns how to apparate (the age laws are different here).

And Lysander isn't apparating to **her**.

As far as **she** knows right, crumple-horned snorkacks and Lysander don't exist in** her **world.


	5. fate

_("Only, think of it—she, that was so beset with admirers!")_

_._

It is worse when he returns.

Lorcan tells him one day after class, that they are Gemini: the Twins. This doesn't surprise him either, but he doesn't have to say it.

He's his _twin_; what else can be said(_without even speaking_)?

Lorcan has Divination with **her**, and he tells his twin everything Lysander already knew. That the only articles she reads in the _Daily Prophet _are the ones featuring her family and the horoscopes. That she dreams of sunlight and fire and a flame burnt out by smoke.

**_Leo _**(_Born July 23-August 22_). "What you see is what you get." A Fire sign, born under the Sun.

Lorcan doesn't need to tell him any of that for Lysander to know **her** fate:

That the air sign in him blows for **fire**, and **she **burns all the more.

And while **she** burns too hot for Lysander to come near, Lorcan is cool and breathes life back into him again.


	6. kindling

_("What was the power in you that forced me to confess these things?")_

_._

Then comes along _**Rose**_. Her temper is as Weasley as her hair, every one of her tall inches a Gryffindor inch that would fight to the death.

She's in _Hufflepuff_.

But she's good and generous and all that's awhile before he realizes that the only thing that burns about her is her hair. Not that Rose smolders, exactly, but she's a candle in comparsion.

**She** is dark like the smoke and sometimes smoke is dangerously close to snuffing out **her** fire.

Add more kindling to the flames: not only is **she** _pretty_, and _popular_ but now **she** is also** _talented_**.

**She **plays Chaser for the Quidditch team; a team of Weasley, Weasley, Potter and Weasley.

Lysander has no idea what anything means but he is content to sit in the stands (once he has determined that they aren't using a real Snidget) and watches **her** fly, the sun spotlights **her** every move.


	7. fall

_("I have such a dread of scandal.")_

_._

That constant _**glow**_ about **her** that out_**shone**_ everyone until they have to watch **her _shine_**?

It doesn't shut off when **she**'s _unhappy_.

**She** is fifteen and it is almost Christmas when he hears **her** scream so loudly in the middle of the party that everyone stills and looks to** her**.

**Her dark eyes** are more red and swollen than flashing brightly. She's not leaping higher, but suddenly stumbles and is falling. There is no roar or purr in **her voice**, just a hoarse whisper.

"Our parents are getting divorced?"

Just like that, everyone finds out that George Weasley's marriage isn't working out.


	8. future

_("But good heavens, we know nothing of the future!"..."No; but there is a thing or two to be said about it all the same.")_

_._

_She_ stays at Hogwarts over Christmas without _her_ family.

Even at that large and noisy Gryffindor table overflowing with food and friends, mouths filling up with chatter and soups, _she_ barely eats and _she _eats alone.

By Easter, _she_ quits the Quidditch team and Gryffindor loses to Hufflepuff.

_She_ fails _her_ Charms O.W.L.

.

Lysander takes N.E.W.T level Charms.

He didn't go to the matches either.

He brings_ her _down to the kitchens and a house-elf named Toasy is glad to make _Roxanne_ a platter of extra-chocolate chip biscuits and as many sandwiches they could want.

_They_ stay at Hogwarts over the next Christmas and the new year futures them _together_.


	9. nightmare

_("I only want to win in the eyes of the world.")_

_._

"Sander, can you believe it? Two whole months and then he says he'd rather go to the Ball with someone else!" Roxanne fumes and stamps around his bed.

It is less than a year later that his wildest dreams are happening. Sure, up until six minutes ago when she came in the door, she has been dating Keith Yaxley, but he has become her closest companion to the point where she always knows the Hufflepuff password so she can storm into his room.

Some of the guys in his dorm (Ed Midgen for one) thinks _they_ are…having _sex_. They aren't. Although it has been nine months since the divorce was finalized and she is acting natural again, she can't hold up the act forever. But her dorm isn't a safe place to drop it, in front of all her admiring fans. So, his dormitory became her dressing room of sorts.

"…and I already have a dress! This is a nightmare; and I can't go alone, all the other girls have dates, even my cousin **_Rose_** has a date!"

Lysander pictures Rose: ocean wave eyes, fire curling hair, a proud Hufflepuff badge on her shirt. **Rose**. _his friend. fellow Hufflepuff._ _Roxanne's cousin. _"What's wrong with Rose having a date?"

Roxanne twists her nails into those wavy locks of hers. "She's not naturally…I mean, not classically, well she is in her own way…she's only going with Scorpius Malfoy because she didn't want to go alone either!" She blurts out, a ragged roar in her throat. "Even _**Lily**_ got herself a date and she wasn't even supposed to be _old_ enough. If Rose would have looked pathetic compared to Lily, can you imagine how bad it would look for **me**?"


	10. dream

_("At ten o'clock—he will be here. I can see him already—with vine-leaves in his hair—flushed and fearless—")_

_._

He can picture it:

Lily flashing around the Great Hall as she spins, an aqua silk whirlwind, a flutter of red hair. She isn't wearing makeup and the only jewelry are earrings, but the feeling of prettiness helps her float.

And Rose, teal taffeta. A friend will hold her still an hour earlier as another twists her hair up and applies lipstick. Then she will cautiously glide her way through the front doors on Scorpius's arm, all the boys in her year (and some older) glancing over their date's shoulder, wondering if that is _really _Rose Weasley?

But _Roxanne_ would still stand out between little flower Lily and just bloomed Rose; _she_ wouldn't even glow, _she **sparkles** _when the light captures _her dark skin_, those _gleaming eyes _and _shining hair_. And _Roxanne _will be in his arms—

"I'll be your date to the ball, Roxanne."

And she turns, just as _dream-Roxanne_ _does in her dance and she is back in his arms_—she is actually hugging him!

"Oh, thank you 'Sander! I'll send up a piece of the material that I gave Keith so you can coordinate your outfit to match…walk down with me at a quarter to eight?"


	11. sun rise

_("Was there no love in your old friendship with me?")_

_._

And it's just how he wants it to be.

Lily, still a little girl in her laughs but he's sure it's not the heels that makes her close to eye-level with him.

Rose is there, tentatively tripping in the dance steps and into love.

But _Roxanne_ wears a gold dress, shines bright and for one night he holds _the sun _and isn't burned—

—Until the sun rises again and Roxanne looks over to him and says, "Thanks 'Sander, you're the best friend I could ever have."


	12. midwinter

_("So I am in your power, Judge Brack. You have me at your beck and call, from this time forward.")_

_._

Midwinter is bleak.

Like the badgers they are, Lysander and Rose hibernate, burying themselves inside the Hufflepuff common room, poking thier heads up long enough to see the sun and star.

Lorcan is a Ravenclaw however, and he just leaves Hogwarts behind. He signs up for the exchange program and for the first time in his life, migrates someplace by himself.

Until the second of February.

"Yes, Roxanne?"

"Do you want to come hang out in the Three Broomsticks with me? You see, it's Valentine's weekend and I don't have a date..."


	13. happy

_("I thought that you, like every one else, expected him to attain the highest distinction.")_

.

Lorcan frowns when he first sees them again after a year on his own and away.

Since the first time Lorcan sees them together, Roxanne has just been dragged away after she hexes Keith Yaxley while his new girlfriend looks terrified, Lysander doesn't blame him.

But it is Lysander who had been the first person Lorcan ever told about his love life too.

_All Lysander says then was "__**Does he make you happy?**__"_

Lorcan nods and whispers later that he hopes she makes him happy.


	14. life illusion

_("These impulses come over me all of a sudden, and I just can't resist them.")_

_._

"It's all an act," Roxanne tells him during their studying (while she looks up from the daily horoscope readings). "That bitch-fight with Stella Fawcett over Keith?"

"You jinxed her." Lysander says, hardly believing what he is hearing.

"Only because Keith told everyone that he broke up me over the drama. I decided I might as well actually give him some." She laughs, a kittenish purr.

And that is the excuse when she tells him about how she left Ed Midgen with a bad case of the blue balls and when she sneaks into Hogsmeade for sips of firewhiskey, swearing to him that she will _**never**_ try that again after he lets her hair down and she stops vomiting into the Hufflepuff's toilet. "_The spectacles of experience; through them you will see clearly a second time_," he says to her. She looks up at him in confusion. "Rolf," he explains his father. "He likes this muggle writer, he's always quoting him…his favorite is '_rob the average man of his life-illusion and you rob him also of his happiness_'."

And then Lysander remembers those few terrible days after the Ball, where he and Rose were robbed but then Roxanne blinks, her eyelashes lower and she smiles and he smiles too and can't help but think how **happy** he is, the richest man in the world, to smell her vomit and hold her mane of hair.


End file.
